The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a health snack food in which a vegetable, fruit, bean or seaweed is used in a large amount as an ingredient.
There have been put on the market a variety of processed foods which make the most use of characteristic properties peculiar to ingredients such as a variety of vegetables and fruits, for instance, naturalness, fibrousness and favorableness for health. For instance, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (hereinafter referred to as "J. P. KOKAI") No. Sho 52-76450 discloses a method for preparing dried banana which comprises adding 5 to 100 parts by weight of water to 100 parts by weight of banana whose skin has been peeled off, rapidly mashing the banana and simultaneously admixing air bubbles to give a paste, freezing the paste and then subjecting the frozen paste to a vacuum freeze-drying process. Although this method makes it possible to give porous dried banana having any shapes, the resulting product is less crisp.
In addition, J. P. KOKAI No. Sho 50-6738 discloses a method for preparing ingredients for dried foods which comprises heating and boiling a vegetable such as a root vegetable or a fruit vegetable till it is sufficiently softened and then dehydrating the heated products. Moreover, J. P. KOKAI No. Sho 59-227264 discloses a method for preparing a vegetable pasta which comprises mixing water with a composition which comprises a vegetable, an alginate, propylene glycoI alginate and a starch, then extruding the mixture into a pasta form and drying the pasta. Further, J. P. KOKAI No. Sho 54-145250 discloses a method for preparing a sheet-like food having a water content ranging from 4 to 15% which comprises adding water to an edible vegetable, grinding the mixture and finely macerating the bundled fibers thereof to give a uniform sheet-like product and then drying the same. However, these methods do not make the most use of the characteristic properties peculiar to the ingredients per se such as color and taste and texture of, for instance, a vegetable and the resulting product does not have sufficient crispness.